Luc O., a former robber sentenced for assassination, was acquitted from the murder of his father who occurred almost 30 years earlier. In the absence of material evidence, the Assize Court of the Alpes-Maritimes considered that its guilt could not be retained.
Luc O., a former asset already sentenced for a sordid assassination, was acquitted Wednesday by the Assize Court of the Alpes-Maritimes who said he had not killed his father almost 30 years ago.
“They decided that I was innocent but if I had to go to prison, I would have gone there”was content to say the accused, still elusive, who left free after the three hours of deliberation of the six jurors.
“I am moved and happy that justice was in this direction. There was no miscarriage of justice. The file was empty and the public prosecutor wanted to feed him with an awful former file but which had already been judged ”said his lawyer, Jean-Pascal Padovani.
A fragile file, a disturbing personality
Because for the accusation, which had requested 30 years of criminal imprisonment, with a period of security with two thirds, the cause was heard. The elements “Converge all towards Luc O.”said the lawyer general, Maud Marty, for whom this parricide was “A birth” in his criminal career.
But in the absence of material elements, and with the withdrawal of the main witness of the accusation, the intimate conviction of the jurors could only have rest on the strange circumstances of the father’s disappearance and the accused’s troubled personality.
Free since 2021, Luc O., now 58 years old, returns for the third time in the Assizes room in Nice. In 2002, he was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment for robberies. In 2012, he received 30 years’ imprisonment for assassination.
The weight of the past and a key absent witness
The first two times, O. had appeared on the side of Philippe Rosso, met in the late 1990s in Nice in the National Front Service (now National Rally).
O. is then depressed, mixing drugs, alcohol and cannabis, chaining sentimental failures and odd jobs, while putting eight years to win a DEUG of law. And he falls under the grip of Rosso, a three -year -old charismatic man his younger man, who trains him in robberies “Minable”.
At the hearing on Wednesday, the investigators mentioned their memories of a band of “Fous furious” who made Nazi greetings. And an O. “Cold as a snake”.
In 2004, since his prison, Rosso, ensuring that he wanted to relieve his conscience, wrote to the prosecution to tell how he and O. made Michel Renard disappear, a fellow of robbery.
At the request of Renard’s daughter-in-law, who was in a relationship with Rosso and accused his stepfather of sexual abuse, Rosso and O. indeed killed their accomplice, in November 1998. Luc O. spent several days gaping the body, passing from the games to the kitchen mixer.
In his depositions, Rosso then recalls what O. had said to him: “Don’t worry, I’m a clean worker, my father’s body has never been found”.
In fact, Gérard O., father of Luke, mysteriously disappeared in June 1995. Aged 62, this very active young retiree, witness to zealous Jehovah, leaves his car, his papers, his clothes, his glasses, an annotated Bible from which he never separated and his retirement pension, which his wife will touch until 2009. And he never gives a sign of life.
Luke, who was 29 years old, occupied a studio next to his father, with whom he maintained abysmal relations. But his relatives, after vague research, evoke a departure to preach in Africa or South America.
By searches 15 years after the disappearance, the investigators find traces of blood in the house, on a diving knife and a grinder blades. But DNA analyzes cannot link them to Gérard O.
“This homicide never took place”repeated Wednesday Luc O., frail physics, white beard and stripping skull, in an almost old courtroom, without civil parties: “What I did to Renard, I would never have done it to my father”.
Convened as a witness, Philippe Rosso did not come, despite a mandate to bring. “I do not know the insuffers or the ends of this case, I no longer want to hear about Luc O.”he wrote to the court.
With AFP
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